Students will enter the project through a dramatic time-travel launch, analyze California history clues from maps, images, and short texts, and begin building shared expectations for research, performance, feedback, and reflection.

Students will gather audience-centered evidence about how to make California history scenes clear and believable by reading short sources, interviewing classmates, observing a theater partner, and organizing findings into empathy artifacts that identify audience needs, hopes, obstacles, and evidence before script design begins.

Students will turn their California history research and audience empathy findings into a clear design brief for a time-travel scene, generate several possible scene and staging ideas, test those ideas against evidence from sources and audience needs, and choose one low-fidelity concept to carry into rehearsal prototyping.

Students will rehearse a low-to-mid fidelity scene prototype, test it with peers and a community theater partner, revise using documented feedback, and prepare a stakeholder-facing prototype showcase with a labeled prop board and short performance segment.

Students will present their final California history performance and exhibit board to families and community guests, then complete a written reflection that explains what they learned, how feedback shaped their work, and how their scene helped an audience understand people and events from California’s past.